In Ecotopia women lead, and most everyone acknowledges the wisdom of the "cooperation- and biology-oriented policies" that supplanted "outdated and destructive male attitudes toward individualism, productivity" and life in general. Their Survivalists aren't paranoid conspiracy hounds, they're ecologists. Gyn-ecologists, you could say, a Mary Daly-esque Biophilic Brother-and-Sisterhood out to "realize the archaic future" and leave man-splaining patriarchs in the past.
As a long-suffering critic of committees and meetings I envy (but don't really get) the Ecotopian Survivalists' confabs, with no formal agenda, lots of "ventilation of feelings," and a gradually emergent consensus. Their "people enjoy such meetings." Huh.
They have extreme goals but use prudent and modest means to achieve them. Remember, Nashville, our dead-in-the-water highspeed bus lane proposal, torpedoed by shortsighted business interests afraid of doing anything that might impact "their" traffic flow?
They've done away with inherited wealth and property, and empowered working people as full "partners." Everyone's encouraged to work less - less even than the standard 20-hour week - and to play more. The visiting American who doesn't know how to play is an embarrassment.
Somehow they pay less in taxes (it helps that the military is comparable to Canada's) but receive more in the form of guaranteed food, housing, and medical care.
In the wake of our latest electoral college result it's noteworthy that Ecotopians are committed to giving urban voters full "one person one vote" representation.
They don't have overstocked drugstores full of tranquilizers, sleep inducers, cold remedies and other items they consider frivolous and gratuitous. They don't medicalize what they consider social conditions like insomnia, and anyway they like to stay up and party. They'll sleep when they're dead.
They haven't really solved race. But we shouldn't be smug, neither have we.
They have legalized marijuana.
They take a childish delight in windmills and wind-driven rooftop generators. Of course they love solar, geothermal, and wave power.
On TV they watch old films, music, comedy, and (it sounds like) a CSPAN-ish Ecology channel. None of our "reality" enetertainment programming, none of our commercial advertising, none of our docility and disinterest in public affairs, none of our demagogic politics. Ready to emigrate?
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